Tom’s Two Cents

My friend Marion and I are both interested in working with GPS/location-based games. Next semester Brett Shelton is doing another instructional games course here at Utah State University, so we are thinking of working with the class to design two versions of a single game — one to be played at the American West Heritage Center using the WhereIGo tool and another as a PC-based game using a game engine called Visionaire. Marion plans to study the impact of presence on long-term recall of facts. (i.e. do people remember more when they are actually there vs. in a simulation.) I’m not really sure what my part will focus on. Initially, I was going to look at piggybacking on the same game and adapting it for the blind. But the devil is always in the details, and I don’t think I could find enough blind subjects to do a meaningful study. It might also be interesting to do research along the lines of depth of learning. In other words, do you learn more deeply if you are actually there vs. being there virtually? Secondary schools tend to focus on hitting a broad range of learning objectives, so I’m not sure if anyone really cares about deep learning these days.

I am also interested in studying the growth of OpenCourseWare through Facebook, but I’m starting to wonder if it would be enough to build on for a dissertation. The guys who created the CourseFeed Facebook app are in the process of updating CourseFeed so it will include OpenCourseWare courses. I can think of tons of features to go along with this, but at the end of the day I’m not a programmer so I can only hope that CourseFeed developers at TopClass take advantage of all that OCW has to offer. This OCW + Facebook mashup could be the start of a great Personal Learning Environment.

At the end of it all, I also want to make it through this Instructional Technology PhD. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the people I know who are interesed in Personal Learning Environments are down at BYU. So maybe the whole Facebook, OCW, PLE thing just doesn’t have enough traction up here at USU. That’s what interests me, but it seems like you have to pick a topic that also interests your committee chair or you won’t get much support. The whole thing is getting kind of frustrating.

This is in response to my brother’s post, My $.02 on Apple’s Response to Microsoft’s Response.
Even though I use a MacBook Pro these days, I consider myself as much of an Apple critic as a Microsoft critic. The fact that I have used macs a lot lately has actually led to even more mac criticisms, but part of that is just because I’m hard on whatever I use. The other part is that I think Apple is following in Microsoft’s footsteps — but somehow is in denial about it all. While it makes for a funny ad, Apple has no room to talk about Microsoft’s advertising budget when Apple is even more concerned about image. I’m talking about everything from Apple’s highly theatrical upgrade announcements to the black turtlenecks worn by Steve Jobs and all his faithful followers — I mean employees. It’s downright creepy. Maybe you have to be this obsessed to have really good hardware design… I don’t know. But the real question we should ask is simple: who is really delivering what the customer wants? Let’s see…

• Vista license servers… because entering that 25-character Windows XP product key wasn’t fun enough
• iTunes’ proprietary .aac (and coincidentally incompatible with anything else) music file format
• The new and “improved” (and coincidentally incompatible with anything else) .docx document file format

No, thanks. None of that helps me. In a lot of ways it feels like a race to the bottom. And, just like the presidential race, I find myself trying to pick the platform I feel will be less awful… but not really what I want. In this regard Apple is giving Microsoft a real run for its money. And while everyone has been asking Apple for a cheaper mac laptop, when Steve Jobs unveiled the new lineup of new MacBooks this month, the closest Apple came to that request was lowering the price of the old white MacBooks to $999… until those run out of stock. Beyond that the price of the next cheapest MacBook jumps to about $1300. Um… did I mention that it has a fancy new metal case? *sigh*

So don’t let the cute “I’m a mac” ads fool you. Microsoft and Apple are both spending plenty of money on advertising (and fancy new metal cases, if you’re Apple.) They even run ads about the other guy’s ads. Does this sound familiar? In some ways I wish the networks would suspend Microsoft and Apple ad campaigns — at least until the presidential election is over. I can’t deal with both software and political ad campaigns at the same time. Too much of the same useless stuff. And if there is anyone else out there that thinks they can build a reliable computer AND listen to customers at the same time, I’m ready to hear from you.

Yesterday I spoke to Jayson and Rich from ClassTop about CourseFeed, their Facebook app that connects users to other course members and course content. This includes a shared “course wall” and “course notes,” which can be posted to and tracked via Facebook. And for students enrolled at institutions with a supported Blackboard content management system, CourseFeed provides additional course notifications from within Facebook. It got me thinking about how something like CourseFeed could be a bridge from traditional OpenCourseWare sites to something even better. I’m imagining a Facebook app that could serve as the hub of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE), the part of your social network where you can track discussions and fresh content on subjects that interest you. CourseFeed is not there yet, but I think they are moving in the right direction.

For now CourseFeed seems to be mostly about delivering course notifications for Blackboard users directly into Facebook, and the course community seems limited to students enrolled in the Blackboard course. (I tried the CourseFeed demo, but I couldn’t test it further because my own institution’s Blackboard does not yet support it.) Since CourseFeed is currently designed with an emphasis on Blackboard, the course content is not shareable for many of the reasons Jon Mott pointed out in his OpenEd 2008 presentation: Blackboard is closed, impenetrable, rigid, and ephemeral. Currently CourseFeed invitations are limited to students who are enrolled in the same course at the same institution. Others cannot join the course. And if the Blackboard course is removed at the end of the semester, it gets removed on CourseFeed as well. The students no longer have access to that course.  ClassTop has also had to move to an opt-in agreement with Blackboard institutions — meaning they have to seek institutional approval, school-by-school, before CourseFeed can be enabled on that school’s Blackboard server. I understand why they had to do it this way, but it kind of kills the potential for CourseFeed to go viral. With these kinds of restrictions, it is notable that CourseFeed has nearly 21,000 active monthly users.

Now think about what something like CourseFeed could be if it were designed without all the Blackboard roadblocks. What if ClassTop designed CourseFeed or another app specifically for course content that was already vetted for copyright issues and openly licensed? These courses exist by the thousands on OpenCourseWare (OCW) sites created by prominent institutions all over the world. If CourseFeed were designed as a way to personalize OCW courses, every course could be linked to its own permanent Facebook group. Anyone interested in the course, including students and professors from other institutions, could join and participate in these groups at any time and for as long as they wish. These connections and discussions might ultimately become more valuable to participants than the original course, perhaps even leading to the creation of additional course content or the formation of new OpenCourseWare sites at other institutions. Additional tools and apps could be developed to promote the kind of learning system that Jon Mott described as open, permeable, flexible, permanent, and free.

I believe more and more students will want to track their favorite subjects and study groups, the same way they keep track of other groups and friends on Facebook. Blackboard will never fill this need because their learning experience is both temporary and unshareable by design. (Yes, I understand why… fair use… blah, blah, blah.) But if CourseFeed directed those same Blackboard students to some recommended, related OpenCourseWare courses, they could form learning goups that would still be there after the course was over — even after graduation, when they are (hopefully) trying to apply some of what they learned. The beauty of it is that the content is already there. Thousands of courses. Any takers?

Please Note: When I refer to Facebook, I realize that other, similar sites exist internationally, including many successful clones. PLE applications could be build for any number of social networking sites that support community driven application development. Personally, I think Facebook will continue to lead in this space, both in the US and internationally. They have undertaken an excellent community-driven translation effort, which is another area of interest to me.

Hulu is viral. Just a few months after its debut, it became the 10th most visited US video site on the web. That’s more viral than the flu in a dirty daycare. So what about OpenCourseWare? Is there any hope for some viral sharing of OCW courses? Not that I expect it to ever spread like Hulu, but it’s worth asking what Hulu has that OCW could try (besides porn).

Perhaps the difference between courses and movies has to do with motivation and interaction. Motivation for something like Hulu is pretty easy to understand. After all, we’re talking about free, on demand SNL here. But interaction can make or break a website. With Hulu, there’s no plugin or player to download (sorry Joost, you lose.) Jason Kilar made sure the interface was ultra-clean and easy to understand. Bottom line: everyone gets what you do with a movie or a TV show. You watch it. Of course, with Hulu you can also leave a comment, plus you can take it with you (Jason had to fight for the ability to embed any Hulu video on any other website — but it worked). People get these kinds of basic Web 2.0 interactions.

With an OCW course, it’s not always clear how to interact with the content because OCW course content is not as consistent as a movie or a TV show. In one course may consist of a video lecture, another may be a course podcast, and in yet another may be simply a collection of course lecture notes in PDF format. So a visitor does not always know what to expect from a course, which in some cases may make it harder to share with others.

I don’t have the answer for how to make OCW courses spread like wildfire, but my suggestion would be to provide ways for the course content to flow easily out of the OCW site and into places where it could be discussed. Places like Facebook, Orkut, etc. Once you allow OCW content into a social networking space, people who care about the content will form groups around it. It won’t be Hulu, and I don’t know that it will ever be called viral, but I bet OCW usage will grow.

If you are in one of my classes, or if you are just curious what I am up to, here is a link to my public calendar. Thanks, Google!

So there is a mom who blogs about her daily experiences and it’s pretty hilarious. Mom’s can feel isolated. Blogs can help. Here is my favorite post (one of her early ones): http://mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/2007/08/adventures-in-grocery-shopping.html

At what dollar amount does money not matter any more? I am convinced that it is around a billion (yes, billion with a “b” — a one with nine zeros after it). This obviously depends on your lifestyle, but a billion bucks would accomodate pretty much anything I can imagine — and I can imagine a lot. (This goes back to my brother Bob’s discussion of the Yahoo/Microsoft buyout debacle).

Yesterday I brought this up with some friends. Marion mentioned that even a million dollars could support someone indefinitely (ignoring inflation). If you stuck it in a CD or some other interest-bearing account that yields 5-6% you could pay yourself $50-60K per year without touching the original million. Where I live, this would be considered a decent middle class income. But when I suggested it to my wife, she just laughed.

So to anyone who has this as their sustainability plan, I dedicate this Bare Naked Ladies song to you.

Over the weekend I got involved in a quick Yahoo Pipes project to aggregate Gustav-related volunteering and housing posts from craigslist. We may have escaped the worst from Gustav, but with other hurricanes already threatening, we are trying to stay mobilized to help in other areas. The idea now it to generalize the site into a Hurricane Information Center while still providing information specific to the individual hurricanes. If you are interested, join the Hurricane Information Center community to see what else needs to be done. We can reuse relevant content and add new tools to provide a resource for folks who will again be displaced by Hannah, Ike, and others.

Chrome is coming! Google’s open source browser project, is coming out in Windows beta. This comic by Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics, does a nice job of explaining the technical details. Here is a brief summary:

Extreme tab makeover: Instead of traditional tabs below the address bar (like Firefox), Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window.

Multi-process design: This is said to use “a bit more memory up front” but it splits up the processing jobs of individual tabs. It’s similar to the design used in operating systems, with multiple processes happening at the same time. One advantage is that an error that would normally cause your whole browser to crash will now only crash that particular tab. Also, when web pages or plug-ins use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager.

Other streamlining: The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features (I am skeptical here, only because I have never used an implementation of auto-complete that wasn’t annoying). And when you open a new tab, instead of getting a blank page or your homepage, you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. On the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs. There are many other features, including a privacy mode, as well as anti-phishing and anti-malware safeguards that keep updating and warn against malicious sites.

Anyway, I’m excited to check out what I expect will be the next generation of web browsers. It’s nice to see that this is an open source project. It seems Google is betting big on the OSS (open source software) model. I think it will work. And I find it interesting how quietly Google goes about taking over… everything.

Today I saw a tweet from Andy Carvin (of NPR fame) that got me involved in a quick Yahoo Pipes project to aggregate Gustav-related volunteering and housing posts from craigslist. I didn’t do much, but now there is a big long feed of housing offers and volunteering opportunities on the Gustav Ning site. If you are interested, join the Gustav Ning community to see what else needs to be done. Three years after Katrina, there are new tools we can use to help folks who will again be displaced by Mother Nature.

You can help too. Gustav wiki needs volunteers to edit pages on aid agencies/donations, govt contact info, etc: http://www.gustavwiki.com. They have migrated content from the Katrina wiki, but many things need to be updated. If you can adopt a page, please do — use the “talk” section of the wiki to claim your particular page and avoid duplication. This is a way you can help folks evacuating from affected areas get the info they need.

What if you don’t have Internet or a laptop? There’s also a mobile-based guide to Gustav resources and information here: http://ventana.cerado.com/gustav08, for those in the path of the storm without internet access. If you have loved ones in the area, please pass this along.